Jamie R

Well, September is rapidly approaching. This means a few things for me, some nice and some not so nice. Once again, I’m off to the PLASA Show at Earls Court on the 7th and 8th, which is always a good event and gives me an opportunity to play with a lot of new toys.

This year at ABTT (which I went to in June), I was intrigued by the differences in atmosphere between the two trade shows. Whilst PLASA is an event for the whole broad spectrum of the entertainment industry and generally holds exhibitors from a wide range of corners of the industry (such as DJs etc - the first day of PLASA is always full of 16 year old “mobile DJs”), ABTT is specific to the theatre side of the entertainment industry. It was very beneficial going to ABTT, seeing as most of the lighting work that I do is indeed in theatres and the fact that I had never been to ABTT before. ABTT is so different in the respect you can actually sit down and talk to people in a decent, relaxed atmosphere on the stands. Whist I felt the amount of exhibitors were rather disappointing, the whole trade show feels so much more professional. At PLASA, whilst it is a professional event, you can’t as easily communicate with reps and people that you know/don’t know from the industry properly due to every audio company having noisy, competing stands.

However, I am looking forward to the offerings that PLASA has this year across the whole industry. I’m especially looking forward to getting my paws on the new Avolites Pearl 2010 which Avo will be launching at PLASA.

RAF’s 90th Anniversary

On a non-technical note, I am also hoping to show up at Duxford’s RAF 90th Anniversary Air Show, commemorating 90 years of the RAF. This will be the first Duxford airshow to feature XH558, the recently restored Vulcan bomber which I’ve written previous posts about. I saw XH558 for the first time at this year’s Farnborough airshow. XH558 received it’s display authorisation from the CAA no less than 2 weeks before the airshow. Pics are being processed at the minute and will be up soon.

Something closer to the heart…

This September also means something a bit more personal as well. LJ will be moving out of her parents and moving up to Nottingham where she is starting a degree in Art History at the University of Nottingham. The thought of three years not seeing her as often is hell, but I guess we shall see how things go! LJ is also 19 on the 13th, so I think that’s a cause for a big party! Love you

Anyway, on a brighter note, my summer hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been mainly working and just chilling out with friends and everyone who is deserting me and going off to uni (lol).

Clacton Airshow 2008

I went to Clacton’s 2008 seafront airshow last Friday (22nd August) and it was amazingly shite usual. I’ve never seen any glorious about the “glorious” airshow that Tendring District Council try and put on. It was a bit better this year, we didn’t have to wait half an hour between each display.

The main problem with Clacton apart from the fact it’s a seafront airshow so one lonesome aircraft so easily gets lost as the display arena along the seafront is about a mile long, is the choice or aircraft. Again, having several solo aircraft (this year’s roundup included the RAF’s Short Tucano T1 ZF338, BAe Hawk XX325, Grob Tutor G-BYXM and Jonathon Whaley’s beautifully painted Hawker Hunter MK58A “Miss Demeanour” (G-PSST) and the Eurofighter Typhoon (no reg noted sorry!) was nice but meant that the aforementioned did indeed happen.

I was especially interested to see Miss Demeanour G-PSST, as I had never seen her at any airshow before. Mainly based at Kemble, I’ve never been up there and as far as I can tell, has never appeared at any Duxford airshow, so she was a nice sight. I think overall out of every aircraft that participated, Jonathon’s display in  Miss D was the most aesthetically pleasing.

Luckily the weather this year was better than the previous years (with the exception of about half an hour on Friday when it rained heavily). Again, the Red Arrows were this year the victim of bad weather, with most of their display being commenced in rain.

The airshow commentary was crap as person usual, lacking in any decent technical detail about any of the aircraft flying (but there again, this is a family airshow and is generally attended by people who don’t know shit all about aviation) so I guess everything being in layman’s terms for Joe Public is adequate. Fortunately I couldn’t hear it for most of the afternoon.

Anyway, you may be thinking that after reading the above, I am no more than an ungrateful bastard who slates a free seafront airshow. That’s what I’ve technically done yes. However, Clacton airshow *is* a good airshow, just it lacks any decent depth of character. TDC and the companies who sponsor the displays work tremendously hard to actually put the display on, so in that respect I am very grateful for the work that they put in, because otherwise we wouldn’t have an airshow in Clacton every year. What I want to say is that from my point of view, because the display arena is so large (over a mile/mile and a half across the seafront), a single display aircraft will easily get lost.

I feel every decent seafront airshow needs a wide variety of aircraft -whist Clacton does have a good variation, it could be a lot better. I am aware of the operational and financial restrictions that the organisers have and they do a bloody good job with what resources the do have. I was hoping to see Vulcan XH558 this year at Clacton, but wasn’t on the cards. I was also hoping to see a rescue demonstration, which is was a feature of the Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival, as was XH558.

Maybe it’s just me, I dunno…

Anyway, a good day out with a pile of decent pics - I’ll get them sorted out and they’ll be up here soon.

I’m gonna sign off and go and watch TV or something. Catch ya later.

Cheers

Jamie.

Well for those who noticed, my site was down for the best part of a week. Anyone trying to access would have been greeted with a “Account expired” page on Web Mania’s website. That is exactly what happened, the site’s hosting contract expired and I didn’t renew it.

I didn’t renew it because I was planning to get my own dedicated web server from 1and1, which this site (and several others) are all now running on. Two friends and I have purchased equals shares in our own dedicated server to accommodate all of our hosting needs.

It is also with great pleasure that I wish to formally launch a new development company, or imitative as I should say. Called Winchester Technologies (website is not fully developed yet), we will be providing high quality website development services in Essex, UK along with fast, reliable hosting as well as domain registration services.

We will be offering web hosting properly in the next few weeks. We won’t be offering our hosting services to everyone as we don’t want to expand too quickly at this stage and we want our server to stay as free as possible in terms of resources for our clients. We will be however offering hosting to a small amount of people, at a fairly competitive price for what you’re getting. Therefore, if you’re looking for a fast, reliable Linux (CentOS) host which you know won’t let you down (or me for that matter) then please get in touch (quickly).

I am still putting the finishing touches to the site’s migration over to our new server, so if you see any problems which haven’t been resolved within a few days, please get in contact with me.

All for now

Jamie.

Only a quickie…
Well, I’ve now officially left TTC - leavers day was today and I got my yellow form signed. No more TTC! Now off to have some fun

On another note, Trivium yesterday announced the name of their new album. Called “Shogun (??)”, I feel it’s sure to be good. Well, atleast hopefully…please please… better than The Crusade. It’s being released on September 30th. Can’t wait.

Jamie.

Well, it’s now June 2008, which is half way through 2008. I feel like I’ve done sod all this year so far but I guess that’s most likely just my own convoluted opinion. Who knows.

Me and Hannah are seeing lostprophets next weekwhich should be good. Missed several chances to see them last year, bad mistake on my part, but sorted now. Anyone coming to the Astoria next week? 11th? It’s not a “proper” tour gig as such, it’s one of several gigs that lostprophets are doing as “warmup” gigs for the big festivals that they’re playing at this summer - Download etc. Should be good laugh.

Me and Miss LJ have been together for 20 months on the 8th. Heck, almost 2 years. You know what? I’ve loved pretty much every minute of it, except from a few little niggles which we’ve passed now. She’s awesome and we’re awesome. Love you

Ermm…ooh and yeah, before I forget. For you IE7 users (I still pity you but I guess it’s better than IE6 and below), I’ll get the main navigation on the site fixed at some point during this week. I’ve been bogged down with all sorts so haven’t been able to get it done.

I’ve started my third and final IT Applied exam today, a day earlier than I first thought, so getting out of bed early was a bit of a shock! Finishes on the 11th though, then TTC sixth form is finished. Leaving TTC will be strange, but I guess it’s gotta be be done at some point in my life. I’ve had a good laugh there and I’ve met some fantastic people, but I guess it’s time to move on and leave Tendring Technology College in the past.

This summer should be good, I hope. Lots of good weather, I HOPE…lots of beaching it with everyone, I HOPE and spending it with the people dearest to me.

Anyway, I’m gonna go get eat my lasagne. For anyone taking school/college exams/driving tests/whatever else, GOOD LUCK!

Jamie.

I just thought I’d say:

MERRY CHRISTMAS - and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Best wishes to all!

Jamie

Linky

Well I’ve been rather busy over the last 2 weeks. Firstly, we’ve made a lot of progress with getting Up and Comin’ organised. We had to change the date and time from January 27th starting at 7.30pm to Feb 9th starting at 3:30pm. This now means that the gig would be rather limited in audience terms, because a lot of lower school kids won’t be able to get to upper school in time (note lower school and upper school at 4.5 miles apart at my school.) Pattern against user had to drop out, but we still have the other bands so it should still be pretty sweet.

In technical terms, I bought a Behringer Eurpower 16 channel powered mixing desk and 2 300W Peavey 15″ cabinet club speakers on the sound side. On the lighting side, I bought 2 magic gobos and 2 Acme iSolution iRock scanners (the barrel mirrors not the mirror ones). The pair of iRocks were pretty good for £350. I’m gonna get a pair of the mirror ones (iSolution iRock 7-S) as well because it will allow me to use full pan/tilt etc on a single mirror using a single beam. This will allow me to use the iSolution iRock scanners as follow spots rather than just disco lights

My mate Ricky came round on Sunday and we planned out how we’re gonna have the lighting set out on the stage in my living room. We put our gear together and turned my lounge into a massive disco in effect - looked pretty sweet although it pissed my dad off a bit! Ricky’s doing the lighting for me for my gig, I’m gonna be doing sound as well as audio/visual etc. Will be good, I can’t wait!

In other news, I built my new PC at last. What a ripper:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual core 2.2ghz with HyperTransport (Socket 939)
• 2GB PC3200 DDR 400 RAM - Corsair ValueRAM
• 2 x 250GB Seagate 7200RPM HDD
• 1 x 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM HDD
• Sony Mulitlayer, Multiformat DVD burner
• Ati Radeon 9550 256MB AGP graphics card
• 19″ Samsung SyncMaster LCD
• All inside an Antec Soho edition file server case with 500W Antec TruePower PSU

I decided to go with an AGP graphics card rather than a PCI-E (PCI express) because I don’t need the power of a PCI-E graphics card at the moment. I don’t really play any games other than Microsoft Flight Simulator and stuff like that so I don’t need a very powerful graphics card. The ATI Radeon 9550 does me fine at the moment.

Also seeing as the processor is dual core, it’s bascially the same as having 2 processors in one

I built my new PC using an ABIT AV8-3RD Eye motherboard. Not a bad motherboard overall, although it overclocks the CPU by default - the FSB is 204mhz by default rather than 200mhz so it could cause problems for some people. However, it didn’t cause me any problems. The board itself comes with 2 onboard SATA ports, Firewire, firewire headers and gigabit LAN as well as the usual stuff like USB etc. I didn’t have any problems with it, and it’s running stable and reliable running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1

I turned my new box into a Server 2003 workstation rather than a server. You can do this via several easy steps which I’ve written below. I prefer to run Server 03 on my main PC now because it’s undoubtly more secure and a lot more stable than Windows XP for obvious reasons.

Steps to turn your Windows Server 2003 box into a Workstation:

• Install Direct X 9
• Set Video hardware acceleration to full
• Go into Direct X’s Diagnostics tool (dxidag) and enable Direct 3D Acceleration and DirectDraw Acceleration.
• Put sound acceleration to full
• Enable the Windows Image Accustion acquisition service
• Disable Internet Explorer enhanced security configuration by going to Control Panel > Add and remove programs > Add/Remove Windows Components
• Install Sun’s Java runtime environment
• Disable the Shutdown event tracker - Go to Start > Run > type in gpedit.msc to get the Group Policy editor up, Browse to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System. Look to the right and you’ll see an option that says Display Shutdown event tracker. Double click on it and then select “Disable”. Then click OK.
• Enable the themes service using services.msc as well as Windows Audio. When you’ve set the services to automatic, start them. Also enable the IMAPI CD-Burning Service.

A more detailed version is available here

I haven’t yet gone and benchmarked it, nor have I added a wireless card which I need to do before I take it along to the gig along with my laptop but I’ll get around to it. I’m wondering if I can get a OEM academic x64 copy of Server 03, you never know…
-Jamie.

Well, technically it was last year since I published a blog post, so here I am. Firstly, Happy new year and all that, little bit late but all good - but like my maths coursework

So far my life’s been alright - Did my first *Real* GCSE Examination yesterday - English Literature. I’m not the strongest in English Lit, but I’m not the weakest so I think I’ll get a fair mark of a B which I’m looking for. All good anyway. Now I’m waiting for the rest of them to arise in June - fun! Wish me luck!!
GCSE Exam pressure isn’t one of the nicest things, and I think that schools should make the pressure a little lighter to a certain extent. I know that school and exams are designed to be challenging, which is good because it identifys your weaknesses and strengths so that you know where you need to work on to improve your abilities. Ah well, maybe I’m just writing shit again as usual

On 9th February (was 27th January but school decided there wasn’t enough time to properly organise it - weren’t my fault), I hope to pull off a stunt which I originally dismissed as being something that no one would take note of or be interested in, but much to my suprise this wasn’t the case. I conceived the idea of having the biggest rock gig in the history of Tendring Technology College after I burnt myself on a stage light - nice! I thought that it’d be nice to get most of the school bands together and have a big concert.

After first thinking that no one would take notice of what I thought we’d do, I told a few people and asked bands to play. Interest has been soaring since then - I now have several friends helping me organise what we *hope* to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest gig in the history of my school - which will be AWESOME.

We now have 4 confirmed bands playing, three school bands which rock and a band from Colchester called Pattern Against User who are regarded as one of the best bands in Essex (well they are!..and for all being 15 and 16, they are pretty damn excellent) which is pretty sweet.

I’m damn chuffed at the amount of interest that we’ve had since I got a couple of people together and asked about having a gig. Furtermore, we are making this a charity gig. Our aim is to give about £500 to two charities minus expenses which we have to take into consideration. We are gonna be supporting Diabetes UK and Great Ormond Street childrens hospital. Reason for this wasn’t hard to find - my friend Nick who is one of the organisers and a member of a band who “The Popes main rivals” who are playing is a diabetic, and without GOSH when I was a baby, I wouldn’t be alive to type this blog post now.

At the moment, we have problems which we need to clear. The school still haven’t finalised our date for the gig yet, and I’m having problems accquring sound equipment - PA equip like Sound board, microphones, amplifer, XLR cables, multicore etc. I can’t use the schools equipment (which would be pukka ’cause they have everything I need) so it looks like we’ll have to hire the equipment in and set it up. No biggy apart from it’ll cost me £250 to hire the gear in…
I’m off to Colchester tomorrow to hopefully purchase a few DMX controlled Spinheads/gobos etc which I’ll use for the gig and also other events that I do at my school. Lighting is something I’m very interested in, although I admit my experience isn’t the highest and I can’t work anywhere doing that kinda stuff until I’m either 16 or 18 in some places - depends on the theatre and their health and safety policies. Ah well, 16 in 4 months

Laters,

Jamie.

Update: Sunday 14th January - Got the sound side of things sorted. I purchased a Behringer Eurpower PMX-3000 16 channel mixing desk and 2 Peavey 300W club speakers which I’ve set up in my bedroom to test - WOOH. Can’t wait to get a few more mics and more XLR cable etc and get the rig set up down at TTC when it’s gig time. Brilliant - cost me £500 and I didn’t get any lighting gear but I’m happy with what I did get.